Around this time of year, many grocery stores will begin carrying seasonal items for the holidays. This is the time of year when pumpkin spice turns to peppermint (a drastic turn for the worse, if you ask me) and egg nog rears its ugly (controversial, I know) head yet again. However, in a winter wasteland of novelty store-bought food, one item makes it all worth it: Lofthouse cookies. Now, I bet many of you didn’t even know that these delectable desserts had a name. For the longest time, I just called them the super-fluffy cookies with the super-flourescent-and-dense-and-sweet icing and super-fun sprinkles and hoped people knew what I was talking about (for the most part, they did). To put it bluntly, these are really, really good. If you’re like me and you think there’s no such thing as too sweet, then they’re right up your alley. And, as part of my recent pattern of making food you get in a store or a restaurant, these cookies were the obvious next choice. Accompanying me along on this adventure was my good friend Jen Greenberg, who is of course responsible for the at-least-decent photography in this post.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Salt

3 1/2 cups (!) powdered sugar

13 tbsp margarine

1/2 cup water

Vanilla

Food coloring

Sprinkles

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease two cookie sheets.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

Mix 1 1/2 cups of the powdered sugar and 5 tbsp of the margarine in a large bowl. Mix in some vanilla.

Alternately add the dry ingredients and water, in three pours each, to the sugar/margarine mixture, mixing until combined after each addition.

Roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut into circular cookies using a cup with a rim of the desired size.

Bake at 350°F for 9-11 minutes, or until the cookies are firm yet slightly crumbly.

To make the icing, mix together the remaining 2 cups of powdered sugar and 8 tbsp of the margarine. Again, you’ll have to use your hands. Mix in the vanilla.

Add food coloring to the frosting. You can split up the frosting in order to create different color options.

Frost the cookies by dipping them in the frosting. Make sure to create cool patterns!

Sprinkle on the, well, sprinkles.

Why this recipe is good for college students: This recipe calls for only the simplest baking ingredients. Additionally, it’s a super fun and easy dessert to bring to party!

Why this recipe is good for those who keep Kosher: This recipe is parve and requires only one simple dairy substitute, the margarine.

What I would do differently if I made this recipe again: We may have left these cookies in the oven a bit too long. It was very hard to tell when they were done since they don’t brown, so we erred on the side of making sure they were fully cooked. However, after tasting them, it quickly became apparent that we could’ve and should’ve taken them out earlier. If I were to make this recipe again, I would take these cookies out of the oven just after nine minutes, in the hopes of achieving Lofthouse’s famous unique texture.